The Portal in the Forest (13 page)

The fifth chamber has, of all things, a
couch. What am I gonna do,
have a guest over?
There are fake
blinds, too, always down and closed because they only show onto
concrete. Was this room supposed to make me feel a little less
trapped? Idiots…

The sixth chamber, offset a bit from the rest
by a small tunnel, houses a vast little factory and furnace room
that keeps me alive. Air conditioning, carbon scrubbing, an
automated hydroponics bay, geothermal power plant, the works… that
shit could run for a hundred years all by itself, if it hadn't been
made by the lowest bidder.

See, I know I'm not supposed to send messages
out. I
know that.
That's the fundamental design of this
whole place. Thing is… there's somebody down here.

I mean, I might be losing my mind. I get
that. But I can feel the curve of insanity ahead in the road, and I
don't think I'm there yet. I really think there's a person in my
furnace room. And I
checked.
I went over every crack in the
wall, every nook and cranny in the air vents, even re-checked the
welded-shut elevator like I do every day: there's no way in or out
of this place.

Yet, there's someone in my furnace room.

I can guess what that means for me, and none
of my guesses are good. I suppose there's no point in hiding,
though. There's literally nowhere to go. And I chose this, so it's
pretty much my fault. Time to face the music… and, more supposing -
better to die now than to spend forever down here losing my
mind.

Actually, not like anyone will get this
message in time to do anything. I might as well check it out
first.

I crept down that long, small concrete tunnel
with the weirdest sense of anticipation. The furnace room had
always creeped me out for some reason; it wasn't meant for anything
but maintenance access, so it was like a series of mechanical caves
and burrows that went on longer than I'd ever reached. It was
always breathing and moving and clinking, even during my supposed
night hours. I hated it.

So,
of course,
an intruder had to have
appeared there. Anywhere else would have been too simple. Crawling
between the water recycler and a furnace duct, I tried to get a
long vantage on whoever was back there.

I froze as I saw a shoe move out of sight up
ahead. Scraping across cement, it had been pulled forward by
someone else crawling through the maintenance tubes. That was it:
proof that someone was down here. But how? Was…
was there a way
out?

"Hello?!" I shouted, immediately taken aback
at the ragged and unfamiliar sound of my own voice.

The only response came in the form of someone
scrambling away in the distance.

"Please, I won't hurt you," I yelled out.

Eventually, I retreated back to the tunnel.
If there
was
somebody in there, they'd have to come out
sooner or later. I pulled the couch over, tilted it up on its end,
and used it as a makeshift barrier in the tunnel. It could easily
be moved - but it would make a noise.

I moved through my chambers carefully, noting
the placement of every object. Nothing had been moved, and I could
find nobody around, so the possible intruder still had to be in the
furnace room…

I decided to get some algae paste from the
kitchen and eat. There was really nothing else to do. I couldn't
risk crawling around in there with some stranger on the loose…
here, I'd at least have a clear view of what I was up against.

The alarm went off as I was eating.
Distracted as I was by the thought of an impossible intruder, I was
initially terrified… but, then, I sighed, and went to deal with
it.

How long did I wait? A half hour? An hour? It
didn't matter. Eventually, a voice radiated down the tunnel.
"Hello?"

In the kitchen, I sat up straight.

It was a woman!

Practically running to the sixth chamber
access, I poked my head around the edge of the couch. "How'd you
get down here?"

I didn't see anybody, but her voice came from
right around the opposite corner at the end of the tunnel. "Where
are we? What is this place?"

Processing her words, my head hurt a little
bit. It'd been a long time since I'd heard anyone speak. All that
mattered was getting out of here… "How'd you get in here?"

Whoever she was, she paused. "I'll tell you,
but only if you tell me where we are."

Court-martial me if I ever get out of here -
what was the use of hiding the information? "We're eleven thousand
feet underground."

Another pause, then a confused tone.
"Seriously?"

I could leave, I could leave, and I could
start a new life… "How do we escape?"

"Just one second," she replied instead, her
tone growing more commanding. "What is the state of Earth?"

I sighed. It was just an overseer using the
comm system to simulate an intruder. Had I imagined the shoe? Or
perhaps it was an adjunct, testing me. I hadn't heard from any of
them in over a year, but they'd been bound to check in sooner or
later… "Looks like business as usual in the TVs. Radio chatter
seems normal, too. A few wars going on, but nothing out of the
ordinary."

"Is that so?" She stepped out from behind her
corner hesitantly.

Holy crap - she
was
really down here!
A brown-haired woman in her early thirties crept down the tunnel.
She wore unfamiliar clothing, but seemed otherwise normal. "You're
not armed, are you?"

I looked her in the eyes across the edge of
my couch. "Why would I be armed? No one should be able to get down
here."

She approached me cautiously, and I retreated
a chamber. She slowly moved the couch out of the way and entered my
space proper.

As she looked at me, I suddenly felt very
self-conscious about my thickening stubble and unkempt hair.
"Sorry," I told her. "I haven't had visitors in a long time."

She circled around me, checking out each
chamber with narrowed eyes one by one. Though I followed her from
room to room, she never completely turned her back to me. We
stopped outside my bedroom, and she did not enter the bathroom
area. "What is this place?"

"My prison," I laughed. "Can we go now?"

"Are you a prisoner? What was your crime?
What justifies burying you eleven thousand feet down?"

It occurred to me that she really had no idea
where she was. This wasn't an act. What if she chose not to reveal
her method of entry? "Oh… oh no, I was joking. I'm… I'm
military."

She set her jaw. I don't think she believed
me.

"Here, come here," I told her, going back to
the fifth chamber. "These TVs… I watch the world here." I touched a
device. "I listen… to the radios… see?"

She remained at the edge of the chamber,
watching me warily. "Why?"

What could I tell her? Hmm… "There's a
problem, see. It, um… it's like this. Say there's aliens. They want
to take over the Earth for whatever reason. They're assholes,
right? Except if they've got brains, they'll understand."

"Understand what?" She slowly moved around
the edge of the room, drifting toward the direction of the furnace
room tunnel.

I could tell I was losing her. "Say there are
monsters, too. Shit, I don't know. Mind-controlling parasites.
Things with eerie eyes that'll eat you alive. Or one that, like,
rips out of your
bones.
Seriously. Your bones. Fates worse
than death. Anything and everything."

Her eyes went narrower, and she
stiffened.

"No!" I told her, highly aware of her body
language. "I'm not saying this stuff exists.
I
don't know.
Some people do, though, and some people are scared out of their
goddamn minds. So if I see, on the TV, that people are in trouble…
that those aliens are attacking, or stuff is
getting
people,
or anything that seems to be condemning the human race to fates
worse than death… well, then I give them the better option. I give
them…
just death.
"

The glimmer of understanding grew in her
eyes.

I decided to push the offensive. "Yes! I can
tell you get it. Aliens can't take us over if we threaten to kill
ourselves rather than surrender. And we can't be trapped in fates
worse than death if we kill ourselves first." I moved along the
wall, touching embedded electronics. "All this… all this… it's
attached to every single nuclear weapon in every single country all
over the world."

"That's why you're so far down," she
breathed, taking in the logical madness. "None of those forces can
find you, or reach you. They can't stop you from activating the…
doomsday suicide pact."

I nodded excitedly, my eyes wide. "Right?
Right?! That's what he said, when he brought me down here.
The
only defense we have against nightmare is the power of
self-sacrifice.
That's our mantra." I thought about that, and…
my hope slowly began to ebb as I realized something. "If you're not
with them, then who are you? I haven't heard from my commanding
officer in over a year."

"The TVs look fine…" she answered.

"They could be faked," I countered. "They're
just signals. If the politicians told the enemy - whoever or
whatever the enemy is - and the politicians
would
have told
them, because the doomsday suicide pact is useless unless the enemy
knows about it - you know, Doctor Strangelove style - then those
signals could easily be fake. Everyone on the surface could be dead
right now, or being kept alive as brains in jars, or being
enslaved."

"Then how do you know anything at all about
the situation up there?"

I glared at her. "My CO is supposed to check
in every so often over a secure line. I haven't heard from him in
over a year. The equipment
broke.
Goddamn government
contractors! But I fixed it. I thought I fixed it. But he's still
not out there."

She looked down at my uniform for a moment,
thinking. "If the signals are being faked, then the enemy up there
has complete control of the planet, and masterful deception
abilities. In that situation, would you detonate the system and
destroy all life on the surface?"

I nodded. "In a heartbeat. If They killed
everyone, or enslaved them, or worse... well then They can all go
to hell."

"What if there are still human beings
fighting for survival?" she asked, her tone quiet. "What if there's
even one person left up there?"

I smiled weakly. "All thoughts that I've had.
In an endless mad cycle. Over and over. Every day. The fate of the
world literally rests on me." My gaze drifted. "Can you please take
me out of here?" My hope rekindled in a burst of warm fire as she
finally just nodded.

"Alright. No man should ever have to make
that choice, let alone by himself."

Almost sobbing, I nodded in agreement.

She began to move toward the access tunnel
when red lights began to blare and a loud noise echoed through the
chambers. "What the hell is that?"

Why did it have to happen
then?
I was
almost out! Despair coiling around my heart, I carefully walked to
the seventh chamber in my underground bunker. The heavy metal doors
slid open in response to my handprint, and a single button lay
within. Above, large red numbers counted down. 21… 20… 19…

Coming up behind me, she studied the room,
and shouted over the alarms. "What
is
this?"

I said nothing. Instead, I pushed the
button.

The alarms ceased, and the chamber slowly
resealed itself.

Standing outside, I could only look at the
cold concrete beneath my bare feet.

She figured it out on her own. "It's not
something you activate, is it?" she asked, her words horrified.
"It's something you
don't do.
"

I nodded absently. "The alarm goes off at
random three times a day. I have sixty seconds to push the button
and stop the process. If I'm dead - if the forces worse than death
have managed to disable or kill me - then it'll go off
automatically. That's the only way to be sure."

She backed away from me. "I can't take you
with me…" She began moving down the service tunnel backward, her
eyes on me, as I slowly followed her. "God… I can't take you with
me… how long have you been down here?"

She'd have known if she saw the bathroom, and
the thousands of marks on the walls that each marked a single day.
She shook her head for nearly ten seconds, probably trying to
comprehend what she was condemning me to. "I'm so sorry…" She
slammed the door to the furnace room behind her.

Just like that, I was alone again. Had I ever
really had company? Had I ever really
had a guest over?

I did eventually manage to get through the
door, but there was no trace of her by then, and no trace of an
escape route.

I knew, then, that I was going insane.

What if the signals are fake? What if they're
not? What if there's
one single person
still alive and
fighting for the fate of the human race? What if there isn't, and
I'm alone on a dead world? What if the surface is covered in slimy,
horrible, extradimensional creatures? What if it's a utopia up
there, and some horrific series of bad-luck mishaps have cut off
the line to my bunker? They could be drilling down to rescue me
even now - if I just had a single communication, a single message,
a single voice… if I just knew
something…!

But I didn't know.

And I couldn't go on.

Court martial me if you can. I decided to let
the timer run out at the next alarm.

I sat there staring at the button, letting
the alarms blare, letting the red lights flash. I held the picture
from my nightstand close.

10… 9… 8…

I wouldn't even notice a difference down
here, would I? The surface could be obliterated by a hundred
thousand nuclear explosions, and I wouldn't feel a thing eleven
thousand feet down, would I?